Transatlantica at Smolny: Old World–New World Literary Contacts

Abstract

The review traces reports and discussions of the International conference Transatlantic Relations in American and European Literature hosted at the Saint Petersburg State University on June 19–20, 2019. The conference aimed to bring together research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on the dynamic processes and cultural transfer in the Northern Atlantic region. The papers focused on the Anglo-American Modernism with its principal centers in London, New York and Paris and on numerous periodicals which created intercultural dialogue in 1910–1930s. The participants also turned to other periods of the literary history and highlighted various aspects of the image and ideology reception on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The conference gathered scholars from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don – specialists in American literary history (T. Venediktova, O. Panova, A. Astvatsaturov, M. Oshukov, Ya. Probshtein, O. Antsyferova, O. Nesmelova, O. Karasik, O. Polovinkina, A. Kalashnikov, K. Vikhrova, M. Arshinov) and in Slavic studies (E. Penskaya, D. Ioffe, V. Feshchenko, O. Sokolova, A. Rosliy, E. Pavlov). The program of the conference also included presentations on history of English (O. Dzhumailo), German (I. Lagutina), Spanish (N. Kharitonova), French (L. Muravyeva), Greek (P. Zarutskiy), Finnish (V. Verzunova) literatures, literary theory (A. BazhenovaSorokina, A. Shvets), history of philosophy (D. Khaustov) and cinema (L. Bugaeva). The speakers considered different trajectories of the transatlantic transfer (US–Europe, US– Great Britain, US–Russia / USSR), outlined various methodological problems relevant to its description, gave interpretations of the real encounters, discussed possible encounters and even paradoxical “non-encounters”. The conference became a unique example of a productive dialogue between scholars – representatives of different generations and academic schools.